CHAPTER 1
SAM
I'm tired of these small-town fairs. Dunk tanks. Kissing booths. Rigged carnival games that send you home with a goldfish if you somehow manage to win. They're always the same.
It’s not even noon, and the fairgrounds are already awash with the smell of cotton candy, kettle corn drenched in butter, and fried everything you could ever imagine. Seriously, they even deep-fry sticks of butter.
From the trailers that serve as carny bunkhouses, I walk toward the purple tent jutting into the sky like a hot-air balloon that hasn’t quite inflated for takeoff. A line of people snakes off from the ticket booths. I bow my head in the hopes that I won’t be recognized—it’s far too early to get into character.
A bunch of young guys in cowboy hats whistle at me from their perch on a wooden fence as I pass. They hop off like vultures, right on my heels even though I do my best to ignore them. I guess the Sweetheart County Fair has the local boys feeling lucky.
"Are you her?" one of them asks. I can smell cheap beer on his breath. "The girl from the poster? Valkyrie?"
I hike my gym bag higher on my shoulder. "Yup."
The guy steps in front of me, thinking he's far more suave than he actually is. "I'll be at your show later.Front row. You gonna spread those legs for me?"
I smile and cock my head at this idiot. "Did you pay the price of admission?"
"Shit yeah,” he scoffs. “Paid top dollar for this seat. But that's nothing for me."
"Top dollar, bottom dollar, makes no difference. You get the same experience as everyone else." I lean in conspiratorially. "And it’s a family show. Sorry, no peeks under the unitard."
The boys all hem and haw as I brush past and round the backside of the tent. Posters featuring my contorted body are everywhere, especially around the ticket booth.The Valkyrie:mind-bending acrobatics, death-defying leaps, and mystical dances.
I wish I didn’t look so erotic on the poster but, Charles is right, sex sells.
I've been traveling with this circus for nearly two years. We're not some old-school tent show that whips elephants or forces monkeys to jump through flaming hoops (that risk lies with me). Our retinue consists of twin-brother fire breathers who can stick nails through their own flesh without a wince, a trio of clowns who studied theater together at Julliard, a band that can play any song requested by the audience by ear while adding their own silly lyrics, a depressed comedian, a magician who gets higher than a kite behind the tent before every show, and me, the Valkyrie, the main event.
Charles insists that we're a classy circus. If that were the case, we wouldn't be touring these backwood county fairs. And if we wereCircque du Soleil, I’d have my own trailer…
"There she is! Our golden girl!" Charles makes a big fanfare when I arrive backstage. The only other person in our shitty staging area is Mark, the sad comedian, so I assume the boss isabout to ask me to do something strenuous on my soul. "Have I told you how lovely you are lately, Samantha?"
"Cut the shit." I drop my bag and join Mark at the little card table. The comedian gives me a minimal-effort smile. "What do you want? You need me to cut another sleeve off my unitard, show some more skin? Or maybe you'd like me to perform nude for the fair's first show?"
Charles is a man somehow stuck between boyhood and collecting social security. His features are gray and heavy, but the way his eyes dart around and that constant politician’s smirk reminds me of a kid who’s always trying to get away with something. Not to mention those ash eyebrows that lick up his forehead like the tips of flames. Our show isn’t for another six hours, but he’s already in his majestic purple and black suit.
He holds his hands up, fingers spread. "What? No, no. Nothing quite so scandalous...unless?"
I give him my most vile stare.
"Kidding! See? Mark thought that was funny."
"No, I didn't," Mark grumbles.
Charles moves on as if Mark no longer exists. "The favor I need to ask of our wonderful, spectacular, transcendent Valkyrie is that she join the panel of judges for the Sweetheart County Fair's esteemed chili cook-off. What an opportunity!"
Mark chuckles, earning the rare ire of Charles’s gaze.
"You're kidding," I laugh, leaning my metal chair back on two legs.
"Not in the slightest. And I so wish you wouldn't do that..."
"I do a high-rise act, jump from swings sixty feet in the air, and contort my body in ways that would pop a normal person’s joints clean out their sockets. This is the least risky thing I'll do all day."
"It's anunnecessaryrisk! What if the chair breaks and you get hurt? Is Mark going to take over the main event? We’d be ruined!"
"Ouch," Mark sighs. "Although... me stuffed into Sam's unitard... there might be something there..."
